Widespread budget cuts don’t spare education

The government’s plan to cut everything except health and education is foolhardy says TEU national president Dr Sandra Grey.

The Prime Minister said yesterday that there would be about $800 million of new spending for education and health in this year’s budget.

“Last year there was about $320 million of new expenditure for education and $780 million for health (2009 actual compared to 2010 budget) and the result in tertiary education is massive numbers of redundancies, students missing out on places and increased class sizes,” said Dr Grey.

“Last year’s new funding simply did not match the number of students who wanted to study, or the impact of inflation. Worse, it is harder to teach students well when budget cuts tear down the rest of their community. When we cut housing, development, social security and welfare spending the result for educators is students with more stress, worse health and poorer living standards.”

“The government faces two challenges this budget – it needs to rebuild Christchurch after the earthquake and it needs to rebuild the economy after the financial crisis. Both have to happen at the same time otherwise both will fail. And both require creating jobs, investing in opportunities and strengthening our communities with strong public services,” said Dr Grey.